


Passing Strangers

by Lothiriel84



Series: Dancing With Tears In My Eyes [2]
Category: MarsCorp (Podcast)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: Running through memories like thieves in the nightClutching emotions, holding too tight





	Passing Strangers

Ever since she’d arrived on Mars – or, more accurately, since she’d been woken up from suspended animation, a few centuries later than she expected – she had the uncomfortable feeling she was working in some sort of bizarre, base-wide kindergarten. Even now, after the shocking news Martin had passed on to her from beyond the grave in the form of a video message, she had had to calm herself out of a panic attack in the middle of a cheering crowd of oblivious Martians, and then spend the next half hour quite literally kicking the lot of them out of her quarters.

Finally, finally she was all alone, and the one thing she was looking forward to was opening one of the bottles from Martin’s liquor cabinet, and drink until she passed out. She relaxed fractionally as the door clicked shut, took a deep breath, and dimmed the lights to a soft glow.

She was so exhausted it took her longer than it normally would to notice there was someone else in the room. She could hear them breathing, and instinctively readied herself to face whatever threat they posed.

Only, it wasn’t much of a threat, she realised as soon as she took a couple of steps forward, and spotted the forlorn figure curled up under her desk, rocking rhythmically to and fro. Oh David, what have you done this time, she thought to herself, a curious mix of irritation and genuine concern prompting her to kneel in front of him, and tentatively place her palm onto his knee.

She winced in sympathy when his head collided with the hard surface under the desktop, reached down to help him get out of there. “David, it’s me. Hob. Are you all right?”

His fingers closed around her biceps, and she let him, until his breathing pattern evened out, and he was finally able to meet her eye. He point-blank refused to be taken to the medical department, claimed that he was perfectly fine – which was the understatement of the century, but she knew better than to waste her breath on what was clearly a lost cause.

“Of course you are. I’m not even going to ask why you are here in the first place.”

David’s face fell, the haunted look in his eyes so intense as she’d never seen the likes before.

“Colin,” he announced, and for a moment there he sounded completely devoid of any emotion. “He – he’s back, I – I can’t. Not again.”

His voice broke near the end, and all of a sudden she could clearly see what had happened a decade before; a naive seventeen year old boy, and a man twice his age, unscrupulous enough not to care about the consequences. And David was still so guileless as to blame himself for the entire debacle, no matter that in the end he’d been the only one to pay the price for Colin’s mad dream.

“To hell with Colin,” she claimed, not quite expecting the startled laugh that came from David. The man still had his arms around her in some sort of awkward hug, and he now let his head fall until his face was completely hidden against her shoulder. She wondered if that was the first time in over ten years he had been offered some form of basic human contact that didn’t involve him getting beaten into a pulp, rested a hand between his shoulder blades as he cried himself to some semblance of calm.


End file.
